


you and me against the world

by winchesters



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-26
Updated: 2013-03-03
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:59:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/700031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesters/pseuds/winchesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is failing junior year-mostly because he'd rather get wasted than study. Enjolras is a star student and head of the political club. When Eponine forces Grantaire to join the club so that she can spend more time with Marius, he initially resists. He and their charismatic leader are like fire and ice...but will their mutual attraction win out in the end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. boys with blue eyes and protests

**Author's Note:**

> Bonjour, my petite croissants. I hope you enjoy this fic. After all, who doesn't like to see their favorite characters suffer through high school?

“Remind me what the hell I’m doing here again?” Grantaire shoots a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here look at Eponine, and wishes for the millionth time that his friend wasn’t so damn persuasive. He knows that the only reason she dragged him to the Political Catalysts Club is so she can oogle over the latest object of her infatuation: some skinny hipster kid named Marius.   
“C’mon, Grantaire, this is a great time to be involved in politics!”  
“It’s also a great time to stare at Marius’ ass,” Grantaire mutters as several more students file into the previously-empty history classroom. They’re mostly juniors and seniors, but kids that Grantaire himself would never associate with: AP students, do-gooders, the kind of people who spend their Friday evenings volunteering at pet shelters and retirement homes instead of getting wasted by a bonfire.   
Marius shows up a few minutes later, closely followed by a blonde-haired boy in a red sweatshirt. Grantaire recognizes him vaguely from Student Council announcements during morning assembly. Enjolras, Grantaire thinks his name is. Something like that, something noble-sounding.   
“Welcome to Political Catalysts Club,” Enjolras announces, setting a stack of flyers down on an empty desk. He scans the room, eyes sweeping over Grantaire. “We seem to have some new members among us today. Why don’t you introduce yourselves?”   
Eponine bounds up from her chair, grinning.   
“Hi! I’m Eponine, I’m a junior and I’m here because I want to change the world.”   
There’s a chorus of greetings from the small club. Then everyone turns and stares at Grantaire. He feels increasingly uncomfortable, and begins to wonder if they’ll start rioting if he doesn’t introduce himself. He stands up awkwardly.   
“Uh, hi. I’m Grantaire, I’m a junior, and I’m here because Eponine forced me to come.”   
This is met with a long, slightly hostile silence. Everyone stares at him, Enjolras hardest of all.  
“Well,” their leaders says tersely. “We haven’t had any new blood in a while. This could be good. Today I’d like to talk about our protest tomorrow at the location of the new fracking company office on Martin Avenue.”   
Grantaire stifles a groan. What else should he have expected: kids who would actually make a difference? These were just a bunch of dumb hippies, the kind of people who thought they could change the world until they ended up begging for change at red lights twenty years and a whole lot of pot later.   
He fiddles with his phone while Enjolras gives an impassioned speech about the many evils of fracking, and how the dangerous practice could potentially destroy the fragile ecosystem. Then another girls stands up to talk about how they’re going to protest outside of a shoe store that funds anti-gay marriage campaigns. As she goes on about marriage equality, Enjolras shoots Grantaire a dirty look when his phone buzzes.   
Whatever. It’s not like he can confiscate it or anything. He’s not a teacher.   
The hour seems to drag on and on, until finally the tinny bell rings, signaling the end of lunch. Grantaire grabs his backpack, relieved, and makes for the door. Eponine stays behind, and he can hear her chatting with Marius and a girl with dreadlocks about the upcoming protest. Grantaire can feel Enjolras’ eyes on him all the way out the door. 

Eponine catches up with him outside of fifth period history. She looks cheerful as she digs her textbook out of her backpack.  
“Sorry that I dragged you to the meeting. But hey, it was pretty cool, right?”   
He shrugs, not wanting to offend her.  
“Sure.”   
They enter the classroom and take their seats at the table in the very back, perfect for slacking off during class. And since Mr. Buttes is approximately nine thousand years old and at least partially deaf, all that Grantaire has done this semester is slack off. It’s only a matter of time until his grades start reflecting that, but for now he feels like doing nothing but catching up on the sleep that he missed last night thanks to his parents’ usual drunken argument.   
Eponine passes him a note halfway through Buttes’ lecture on mitosis. It reads are u going 2 to the protest on sat.?   
He scribbles back fuck no and spends the rest of the class staring at his beat-up converse to avoid Eponine’s pout. Afterwards, she shoves him against a locker and glares.  
“You can’t make me go alone! It’ll be so awkward!”   
Grantaire rolls his eyes and squirms out of her grasp.   
“Why are you going? Since when have you cared about the environment?”   
Eponine flattens her mouth into a disapproving line.   
“Whatever. Pick me up at eight tomorrow, okay?” 

It had seemed like a fine idea yesterday, but now it’s eight a.m. and Grantaire is certain that his brain is trying to exit his skull via his eyeballs. Eponine shoved an extra-large coffee into his cupholder as soon as his ancient station wagon rattled up outside her apartment, but the smell is frankly nauseating.   
“Is something wrong?” Eponine glances sideways at him as they pull out onto the interstate.   
“Nope,” Grantaire lies. He knows that Eponine doesn’t really approve of his rampant drinking, despite the fact that she frequently imbibes herself. She can see through his lie, of course. They’re cut from the same cloth: kids from the wrong side of the tracks, kids with parents who drink and collect welfare checks, kids who are going nowhere in life. And it hurts, yeah, but lies are an armor like nothing else. So yeah, Grantaire’s ‘fine’. Just like he always is.   
Eponine turns the radio to a rock station and a catchy pop hit fades in and out of static as they turn off the highway and onto Martin Avenue. It’s a wide street, lined with shops and restaurants that are mostly closed at this hour. At the south end is a squat brick building that hosts a dental office and the new brach of Independent Energy Solutions. A small group of students has already assembled, and they’re listening to Enjolras lecture about the merits of peaceful protest. Eponine bounds over to stand by Marius’ side while Grantaire parks the car. He lingers of the edges of the little group, aware that several students are staring at him. Only one, a cheerful boy with wild dark hair named Courferyac, gives him a smile and a stack of flyers.   
“You can hand them out to anyone who passes by,” he says. The street is practically deserted, but Grantaire takes up a place by the corner of the building and prays that no one he knows sees him with these freaks.   
By nine the protest is warming up, and the few people who pass by are quickly handed flyers and given lectures-mostly by Enjolras-about the evils of fracking. Most of them quickly brush the students off, hurrying towards their coffee dates and dentist appointments. They don’t care about anything but themselves, and a few chanting high schoolers are never going to change that. Grantaire wonders if everyone in this stupid club is delusional; can’t they see that their efforts are failing?   
A half hour passes and Grantaire is seriously considering splitting. His head is killing him, and his mouth is drier than cotton. His stomach drops when he sees Enjolras approaching, a stack of leaflets in one hand.  
“Why aren’t you giving people the leaflets? That’s your job,” he says, and his voice is flatly accusatory. Something flares inside of Grantaire.  
“Do you really think that people are gonna take this seriously? We’re a bunch of high school students. We can’t do anything.”   
Enjolras takes a step closer to him, and Grantaire can’t help but notice the deep blue of his eyes, like the sky before a storm.   
“I know that you don’t want to be here, okay? But all I’m asking is that you at least pretend to be interested in helping out for another few hours. Even the smallest person can change the world, Grantaire. Even someone like you.”   
He turns and walks away, leaving Grantaire alone with his leaflets. He watches the boy in the red jacket join his friends-his followers-and tries to pretend that the feeling swelling in his chest is simply a result of his hangover and not an incredible shame.


	2. your eyes burn like fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets kind of sucky towards the end. I'm sick and lacking motivation but I wanted to put something up before y'all started assuming that I'd abandoned this fic. Anyway, enjoy.

“We only have one planet!” Courf shoves a leaflet into the hands of a middle-aged woman. “Save our earth before it’s too late!”   
Grantaire leans against the brick building and groans.  
“You sound like a doomsday preacher,” he says. Courf shrugs and grins, ever-cheerful.   
“It’s true, man. People don’t realize that once we destroy this planet, there’s nowhere else to go.”   
Grantaire watches as a pair of mothers pushing strollers hurry past, ignoring the pamphlet-pushers. Courferyac is from a middle-class family, a bright student and the head of the Poetry Society. He’s cheerful, easy-going, a floater who’s friends with everyone from the jocks to the nerds. Grantaire wonders why in the hell he would get involved with someone as domineering as Enjolras.   
“I guess so,” he agrees. He leafs through the pamphlet for the first time, scanning the brightly-colored pages. There’s a diagram of a fracking device, a photograph of dead farm animals, and another image of withered farmland. As horrible as the images are, they don’t exactly strike fear into Grantaire’s heart.   
Then he looks up and his blood freezes in his veins. A very familiar truck is rattling down Martin Avenue: rusted red, the passenger side door duct-taped on, the license plate frame empty. It’s his father’s truck, and the sight of it sends a chill of fear down Grantaire’s back.   
‘If Dad sees me hanging around with these hippies, he’ll whip my ass’ he thought desperately, shoving the pamphlets into the nearest garbage can and making for the narrow ally between the brick building and the pharmacy to the right. He flattens himself against the wall, praying that his father is still hungover too, and tilts his head back against the cool brick. He hears the truck rattle past, and breathes a sigh of relief. Then he hears footfalls approaching, and even though they’re too light to be his father’s, he tenses.   
It’s Enjolras, and he’s pissed.   
“What are you doing? Did you think I wouldn’t see you throw those pamphlets away?”   
Grantaire faces the glaring activist. Even in the dim ally, Enjolras’ eyes gleam with a fire that seems impossible to extinguish.   
“You should have given them to someone else if you wanted to abandon the cause,” the leader lectures. “Unless, of course, that was a slight towards our protest. Towards our goals.”   
Disgust seizes Grantaire. Is Enjolras really that thickheaded? So deluded that he thinks that everything revolves around his stupid plans to save the world?   
“You’re an idiot,” Grantaire says, his voice quiet. “You’re a fucking idiot, do you know that?”   
Enjolras freezes. He’s obviously unused to being insulted by his followers.   
“I’m not one of your little minions,” Grantaire snaps. “I’m not onboard with your dumb plans to stop oil drilling or whatever, okay?”   
“Fracking,” Enjolras corrects, apparently unable to stop himself.   
“Whatever,” Grantaire says. “They might think that you’re some kind of god because you’re a smooth talker, but you don’t have me fooled. I think your little club is really fucking stupid-do you honestly think that a bunch of teenagers can change the world?”   
Enjolras faces him squarely, eyes shining brightly, his chin tilted upwards as if in defiance of the words tumbling from Grantaire’s mouth.   
“Not everyone is like you, thank God. You’re the human embodiment of apathy, and people like you will change nothing in this world, simply because you don’t care enough to do anything. Don’t you ever wish that you could be better?”   
Grantaire wishes that he were unaffected by the words, but he feels a venomous pain boiling inside of him.  
“Not if it means being like you,” he replies. “You’re a total dick, you know that?”   
And he turns and strides away, wishing that he couldn’t feel those blue, blue eyes boring into his back. 

He drives home, unsure of where else to go. The driveway is empty, and Grantaire sits in the beat-up station wagon there for ten minutes, staring at the tumbledown white house in front of him. He’s grown up in this place, this one-story house with the rusting tin roof that sounds like bullets in the rain. A house with no air conditioning and heating that’s faulty at best, with floorboards that creak and walls thin like paper.   
No one’s home when he goes inside, so he grabs a beer from the fridge and heads up to his bedroom at the back of the house. His dad never notices when liquor goes missing, probably because he’s usually to drunk to check. Grantaire’s been sneaking beers off his old man since he was thirteen, when he would smuggle them out to bonfires and school dances in his hoodie pocket.   
He downs the beer in a few gulps, then lies on his bed and stares at the ceiling. He’s pissed as hell, but it’s Saturday and he can’t be bothered to track down the curly-haired little wanker now, even though he’d like to knock a few of those shiny white teeth out.   
‘Who am I kidding?’, Grantaire muses. He’s never been the violent type, although he’s engaged in more than his fair share of physical altercations while drunk, while sober he’s about as harmless as a puppy. He resigns himself to a weekend of drunkenness and fantasies about punching out stupid teenage revolutionaries. 

On Monday, Eponine corners him outside homeroom.  
“What the fuck? Enjolras told me exactly what you did on Saturday. If you didn’t want to be there, you shouldn’t have come at all!”   
Grantaire rolls his eyes.  
“I fucked off because I saw my dad, okay?”   
And her expression changes, morphing instantly into concern, brown eyes filling with worry. Her fingers pluck nervously at his flannel shirt and she leans in close, fitting her arms around him.  
“Oh, Grantaire. You should have told me. Did he see you?”   
“No,” he murmurs against her soft, shampoo-scented hair. “Thank God. He would fucking tanned my hide.”   
She pulls back, her eyes soft.   
“Good.”   
He ducks away from her arms before she starts hunting for bruises: just because his dad didn’t catch him protesting alongside a bunch of no-good hippies doesn’t mean that Grantaire didn’t get his punishment for breaking a plate while microwaving day-old macaroni. 

Last period he has a study block, and he’s walking past the empty history classroom when he sees them: stacks and stacks of posters and pamphlets and flyers, all just sitting in cardboard boxes. Waiting. Grantaire creeps into the classroom. Mr. Pitzer’s not there, but his keys are on the desk. He’ll have to be quick about this.   
‘What in the hell should I do’, Grantaire wonders, eyeing the sink at the back of the classroom. ‘Water damage, maybe’. No, that’s not harsh enough. His fingers travel to his pocket, and he feels the cool bulge of his lighter through the denim. Perfect! He’ll burn everything.   
He flicks the Bic lighter a few times-must be running low on fluid) until a decent-sized flame flickers to life. He turns around, ready to wreck flaming havoc on the Political Catalyst Club, when someone clears their throat.  
Shit. Enjolras is standing in the doorway, arms folded, looking more pissed off than King George after the Boston Tea Party. Grantaire’s blood actually runs cold. He drops the lighter; it clatters to the floor and the light flickers out.   
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Enjorlas stalks forwards, face taut with fury. “Thought you’d come and destroy all our hard work, huh? Get back at me? Make me pay?”   
Anger swells in Grantaire’s chest, but he feels strung-out and exhausted, and all that he manages is a single word:  
“Fuck.”   
Enjolras hauls him outside the classroom, Grantaire struggling against him. Although lithe, the blonde boy is a lot stronger than he looks. And against a reedy guy with a hangover, it’s not much of a competition. Enjolras slams him against a row of lockers.   
“You stay away from my club, understand?”   
Grantaire laughs in his face.   
“You’re an asshole, you know that?”   
Enjorlas releases Grantaire and dusts off his red jacket.  
“At least I’m not a useless drunk like you,” he says, and his voice is calm and lacking its earlier venom.   
Grantaire barely registers balling his hand into a fist and punching Enjolras as hard as he can in the jaw. The other boy stumbles backwards, his hand coming up to his face, and his blue eyes are fixed on Grantaire’s.  
“I could report you,” he huffs, straightening, “you could be suspended.”   
Grantaire responds by edging closer to the other boy, close enough to inhale his musky scent.  
“Fuck me, pretty boy,” he spits, and he turns and walks away. He keeps walking until he’s out on the street, heading in the vague direction of home, and he doesn’t stop to think that Enjolras never hit him back.


End file.
